Granted, he asked for the help of local divers first, but they failed to find the phone on the bottom of the artificial lake. Armed with authority as a food safety inspector, he asked another official if he can pump out some water, using the permission to order that the whole dam be emptied so that he can retrieve his phone. While the other local government official verbally agreed to send “some water into a nearby canal” with the argument that farmers would then have more of it for irrigation, the diesel pumps ran for several days.
Mr. Vishwas claims that the water drained was from the overflow section of the Kherkatta Dam and not really usable, but he still got suspended pending a further inquiry, as a local government representative commented that “water is an essential resource and it cannot be wasted like this.”
As for the Samsung Galaxy phone that started it all, it was actually found at the bottom of the artificial lake at one point in the draining spree, but was too damaged to work properly, so the whole enterprise seems to have been in vain.
